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Love Poems - Part II
Rati Saxena Photo by Enrique Moya
"I must accept that being a part of a society dominated by man, in being a girl from a house of daughters, and in being a talkative, equally lonely girl, I could never muster the courage needed to write freely about feelings of love. I always tried to cover myself with images, and therefore it took long time to convert my experience into poetry. My early poem 'girls from good families' is the cocoon, out of which slipped my words to learn what was to come. I learnt to get wings and how to gain in heights." - Rati Saxena
Girls from good families
do not fly kites.
Kites have colours
colours have desires
and desires do sting
Kites are made of paper
paper gets torn
then the body becomes impure
Kites have strings
strings go loose
they lose their way
There is flight in the kites
they fight with the clouds
their nerves break down
That is why girls from good families
never fly kites.
The satire in this poems is repeated in many of my other poems, but my very sharp love poem was actually a hate poem. And this poem goes something like this:
The love of big black ants
One doesn’t know from where the big black ants
Spread out on the floor like black stars on rainy evenings
Attacking their prey
They do not believe in
The line discipline of the red ants
Nor in their queen’s orders
They catch and swallow
Everything white
Like sugar, rice, moths
If they want to carry a big dead body
They are united like labour unions
They can live anywhere:
The wrinkled skin of trees
Houses of leaves
Roots of any thing.
Those whom they love
Change into them.
The tree they live on -
Not a single fruit can remain there
Nor bird live.
Their kiss is
Sharper than their sting,
Which changes them into pieces
They are greater lovers than humans!
The last lines of the poem “Their kiss is /Sharper than their sting,/Which changes them into pieces/ They are greater lovers than humans!” express the essence of love.
Strangely enough I wrote this poem out of fear during my childhood. In those days, whenever I had fever, I used to see the Big black ants in Elephant size. I used to be so much afraid that I could not sleep. This strange dream followed me for long, until I wrote this love poem for them. Now I ask myself if I was a big black female ant in my previous life, so that my love was following me, or I long for such a sharp love? I still do not know the answer to that even today…
But my next love poem was based on an unusual experience. Once I was longing for an unknown odour. I could not understand my longing for a particular passionate odour. It so happened that I was passing by the sea while walking along the shore on my way to some work, and only then did I realize that it was this odour of Sea I was searching for. I remember it for a long time. Never before I had been at the sea. Yes, the sea has a special meaning for me as I was born in the desert. Somehow, I decided to go to the sea. I spent almost 2 hours beside the sea, without talking with someone else or looking at something else. When I was back home, this love poem came to me.
The sea
1
The sea is very different
From the sky
Different too are
The clouds from each other
But when, as she stands on the shore,
He holds her in his wandering arms
makes wet the hair scattered in her face
fondles her thighs,
puts his head on her feet
And turns back,
Then, where is the difference
Between him
And an unsatisfied lover ?
2
every evening
taking the samidha of clouds
in the homakund of the sun
putting the ahuti of waves
the sea creates an abhichar,
every evening
black comes from the abhichar
spreads the news of a conspiracy,
and from this conspiracy
this world has grown
3
as the evening withers away
a star sprouts
directly out of the sea
with his finger on his lips
he bids me, you and them to be quiet,
to be careful,
for you are not the only one alone,
we all are alone
in our own sea
4
I saw
him and the sea
that evening
he was rolling in the sea
and the sea was flowing over him
he saw
me and the sea
together
the sun was sinking in the sea
and I was sinking with him
we saw each other
and started to sink into each other
5
in the black quietness of the night
the earth grows
a ray of light
what is unusual
the sky always hangs
lamps of light
every night
to look at the sea
why does he remain behind
is he bringing the line of light
which burns like an oven
across the other side of the sea?
6
somebody says
it is an open sky
as open
as an open fist
somebody says
it is a deep sea
as deep
as the heart of man
when I saw
it was an empty canvas
which had not
a single line of scratch
7
It is the sea of smell
of bodies of floating light
the smell makes the nostrils flutter
like fish
swimming in water .
that smell
enters into every pore
like pieces of shells.
And the body changes
into a sea of smell
8
keeping close to his chest
innumerable colours
like floating lights
and laughing rocks
how lonely is the sea
who knows?
Even the sea does not know
but when his reverberations are felt
then the waves put their heads on the shore
and the bursting bubbles
whisper into the ears
how lonely is the sea
who knows?
9
the sea is getting wet
in the rain
laughing
like a desert child
the sea is getting wet
by own tears
smiling
like a young woman
sitting on an island
the sea is getting wet
with the shower of love
sobbing in pain
getting separated
from his loved one
the sea is getting wet
in the first rain
after the summer
10
the smell of the sea
is different from
the soil wet in the rain
it has no relation
to the smell of a flower
it does not know
the sharp taste of passion
the smell of the sea
does not enter into the nostrils
but enters into every pore
and touches gently
and hypnotizes
the smell of the sea
tells the oral story
of the sweat of fishermen
the play of sea animals
and the legends of ships
Critic may say, this is reflection of my passion for a lover. I would accept that without explanation as it is just impossible to describe that the passion for the sea is bigger than the passion in man. In fact passion does have a language, but it does not have a face. I could be there in any shape or face.
My other love poems, whom l still like, are also is somethings different!
Mountain Nights
*
Last night
There was a dream
And
In the dream – You
You
You
And
Only you
Where was I?
**
Before your arrival
I knew some names
Mountain, river, lake, waterfall
You introduced me to
Tents of snow camping on the mountains
Storms arousing the rivers
The tiniest waves in a lake
Singing waterfalls
And
to myself
But it was you I wanted to be friends with !
***
Last night
Earthworms lost their way
and crept into snake pits.
Finding no room, snakes
created a stir in the sea.
No, no,
Nothing happened to the fish.
They stayed in the sea,
And as if looking for - for what -
almost forgetting to swim.
No one called the gargling earth.
Neither the sky
Nor the sea.
I stayed up last night
on the tree.
****
Last night
the sky was so close
that I could cover myself.
The mountain too, sat,
smoking.
The sea kept
caressing my feet.
Only I was not there,
Maybe I was roaming
with wild animals.
******
They say
his nights are like mountains.
Mine was like
sluggish water.
Yet
The night stayed awake
in my eyes.
(July-2005)
I remember when I have gone to Laddakh, the mountains are bare because of a shortage of rainfall, that is without any greenery. I always felt them in my soul, in my body and/or in my mind. I loved to look at them, loved to feel them and loved to think of them…is that not a passion?
This does not mean that I have not written any love poem in natural norms. My long poem is my longest love poem. It expresses love for being a woman and love for a lover of this woman. I must also agree that most of my poems are love poems, only their colours are different; some times they talk about dark colours and sometimes they are full of light colours.
I end my talk with this poem, and I am sure, you will search love in this village of colourless colour.
The absence of colours, in the world of colours.
Long, long ago
Before the birth of the rainbow
In the city of colours
There was only one colour
Neither blue, nor yellow
Not even red or brown
Only one colour
Roaring like death
Deep like silence
Tent of fire
Tightened from here to there
Coloursless colour
Eggs screeched into life
Life gave birth to children
Colours entered into the earth by crawling
Changing rocks into the earth
Some flew fluttering
Becoming the umbrella of the sky
Colours strengthened the backbone
Leaves sprouted on the backbone
Shadows took rest under trees
Dowsing with colours
Drops of light dripped down
Blossomed into flowers
Faces of colours started shining
Becoming colourful
The city of colours arose
Playing holi with colours
Forgetting the journey of crawling colours
Friends! In the story of colours
Those colours are not there
Which are really colours.
*Holi- Festival of colours famous in India
Rati Saxena
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